A pilot is faced with two major tasks; i.e. (1) to accurately determine and remain constantly aware of the current aircraft status including direction, speed, altitude, location and the rates of change of each; and (2) to quickly and accurately control the aircraft to effectuate a change in these parameters to achieve a desired status of the aircraft including, for example, setting or altering the aircraft's flight-plan.
To this end, avionics display systems deployed aboard aircraft has been extensively engineered to visually convey a considerable amount of flight information in an intuitive and readily comprehendible manner. In conventional avionics display systems, much of the information visually expressed on a cockpit display, (e.g., a primary flight display, a horizontal map display, a vertical situation display, etc.) pertains to aircraft parameters (e.g., the heading, drift, roll, and pitch of the host aircraft), nearby geographical features (e.g., mountain peaks, runways, etc.), and current weather conditions (e.g. developing storm cells). A further improvement occurred with the introduction of flight management systems, a type of specialized computer that includes a database of pre-stored navigation landmark, such as an airport, or may represent an imaginary intersection (a waypoint) in the sky.
In addition, pilots strive to create a precise picture of future situations using information that is currently available to them such as weather reports and forecasts, pilot reports, NOTAM (Notice to Airmen), information about other air traffic, and the like. Such information useful for strategic decision making inherently includes a temporal component, which may be closely associated with a location e.g. (e.g., What will the situation look like in 20 minutes at a specific location?).
The management of strategic information and optimal situational awareness are important topics in and among the aerospace industry. For example, strong emphasis has been placed on this in the development of the FAA's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and its European counterpart Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR), which are parallel projects intended to completely overhaul their respective airspace and air traffic management. For example, NextGen will comprise 1) automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) incorporating GPS satellite signals to provide air traffic controllers and pilots with much more accurate information to help keep aircraft safely separated in the sky and on runways, (2) providing aircraft and ATM with data-link communications for traffic control clearances, instructions, and advisories improving controller productivity, enhancing capacity, and increasing safety, (3) reduce weather-related delays by half by providing a common weather picture across the national airspace thus enabling better decision making, and (4) replacing the multiple different voice switching systems that have been in use for many years with a single air/ground and ground/ground voice communications system.
Currently, strategic decision-making is supported by many information sources, some of them including navigation service providers (ANSP), airline operation centers. Others include various applications installed, for example, on electronic flight bags (EFBs). Commonly, such applications require the flight crew to connect information from various devices; for example, integrating information disseminated as NOTAMs, published activation of restricted airspaces, and/or weather information with an estimate of future position. This is time-consuming and requires a significant amount of cognitive resources; e.g., navigation mechanisms are supported by pull-down menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, etc. Thus, providing each piece of information individually without a broader context does not enhance the temporal or local aspects of the information provided.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide an enhanced HMI navigation mechanism that includes function selection that are continuous (i.e. temporal), sequential (i.e. flight phase and waypoints), and time-based (i.e. past, present, and future). It would also be desirable to provide an enhanced HMI navigation mechanism that can be operated consistently across all strategic functions and applications in the HMI environment (e.g., an EFB utilizing many strategic applications). In this manner, temporal navigation associated with a location is integrated into the graphical user interface environment of a strategic decision support tool improving usability by increasing comfort, reducing workload, and increasing efficiency when making strategic decisions.
It would further be desirable to provide an enhanced HMI navigation mechanism that (1) is not limited to displaying weather or forecast information in general, but can also display time and position related data such as NOTAMs, predictions, and estimations, (2) does not merely switch between present and future information but provides sequential and continuous navigation from past, through present to future, (3) is reusable and consistent when manipulating timeline information, and (4) provides a moving-to-the-future capability that enables to see how things will look (e.g., remaining fuel estimate at a future point of interest) and a moving-to-the-past capability (e.g., previous weather trends as they relate to current and/or future position).
It would still further be desirable to provide a time-screen structure wherein the screen comprises a menu-bar for selecting a function, a canvas area for displaying application-dependent content, a feedback area, a home button, and a timeline widget that controls what is displayed and provides time-based navigation for the currently selected task/function by moving the visible timeframe of the flight forward and backward.